Major legislation in the area of public employees was the ratification of various state employee memoranda of understandings which included SB 357 (Perata)-Operating Engineers; SB 750 (Soto)-Professional Educators and Librarians; AB 146 (Nunez)-California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment; AB 386 (Lieber)-Union of American Physicians and Dentists and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; AB 1165 (Bogh)-Firefighters; AB 1369 (Nunez)-Professional, Administrative, Financial, and Staff Services Employees/Professional Educators and Librarians/Engineering Scientific Technicians/ Printing and Allied Trades Employees/Registered Nurses, Medical and Social Services Employees/Educational Consultant and Library Employees; AB 1458 (De La Torre)-Professional Scientists and Psychiatric Technicians; AB 2930 (Laird)-California Union of Safety Employees; and AB 2936 (Ridley-Thomas)-California Highway Patrol.
Other significant public employees legislation enacted at Sonoma State University included AB 1643 (Jones) requiring the California Institute on Human Services to conduct a study on the impact of enrolling members of the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) who are currently ineligible for the PERS Long-Term Care Insurance Program; and AB 2941 (Koretz) prohibiting PERS and the State Teachers’ Retirement System from investing public employee retirement funds in a company with active business operations in Sudan.
Vetoed legislation of note included AB 1897 (Dymally) adding reasonable attorney fees and costs to the available remedies that the State Personnel Board may order when compensating an employee who has suffered employment discrimination under the State Civil Service Act; AB 2132 (Levine) preventing a retiree of PERS from receiving a reduction in health benefits due to reinstating to active employment; and AB 2683 (Negrete McLeod) requiring the state to pay rank and file members of Bargaining Unit 8 (California Department of Forestry Firefighters) the estimated total compensation for each corresponding rank in other jurisdictions employing 75 or more full-time firefighters in California.